MLK for Engineers

What? You must be asking when you see this post's title. Well, here I am at the office, working, while most of the country has the day off. The morning commute was a breeze, because all of you were at home.

I'm sure the blogo is chock full of tributes to Luther's work, both as a civil rights leader and as a Christian theologian. On days like this, writers are basically required to write something (though writing about MLK is, and always will be, more of a priviledge than writing about say, Bush).

Anyway, I figured I'd put my own spin on things and write about something else, for the reading world who hasn't read MLK's biography.

Did you know MLK had a PhD in philosophy? Nice. That's something I can grab on to, because it validates for me that Luther's thought processes were not just the anger of the oppressed, rather they had been refined and organized through vigilant study and practice. One does not become a Doctor of Philosophy in philosophy without learning how to philosophize.

It also validates, for me, that many of his arguments were logical and therefore must be timeless. Philosophical truths are true forever, and the truths that Luther preached, both from the pulpit and from the streets were not just the voicing of an angry minority. They were the carefully thought out, valid, Christian-based, systematic arguments of a man who saw the world for what it was and what it easily could be. Luther did not make radical predictions about a far-off future. Luther recognized shrewdly that he was standing at the corner and the traffic lights had but to change for the whole country to turn a new direction.

The tragedy of MLK's death was for me the tragedy of a lost mind. Did you know MLK skipped two grades and never graduated high school but just went right to college after his junior year? I often have joked that the idiots are statistically outbreeding the smart people in the world, but in all fairness, the smart people of the world are just not getting as much TV face time or literative output anymore. Smart people, it would seem, are the first to become jaded and turn away from public service. The gaps are filled with the average, and the corrupt.

There was a time when engineering for the government was considered a dream job. It was the Space Race from about 1953-1972. In that time, the government had a small army of engineers doing their dream job: developing something radically new for the betterment of man and country. NASA had the pick of the litter, and if you want a quick summary, the engineers of NASA designed, built, tested, and flew to the moon 7 times in less time than it takes to build a football stadium in today's world. This, I believe, is because the smart minds of the world are scattered, unorganized, and under-utilized. Or, in the case of MLK, their vast potential is snuffed out by a bullet. One might argue that smart minds are still organized, into "think tanks." But show me a think tank that doesn't have lobbyists and an maltruistic agenda? Show me the think tank that works for the government and whose members are all making middle-class income. They simply do not exist. Today, a "think tank" is just a code word for "lobbyists, inc."

Anyway, Yglesias makes a good point: MLK's stance on non-violence was radical. Similarly, Ghandi's stance on non-violent resistance was radical. Where are the radical Christians today? Because there are certainly still the oppressed who need a genius to raise his voice for them. And there is still a lot of hate left to end.


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